MUNGO PARK DIDN'T DISCOVER RIVER NIGER - YouTube MUNGO PARK DIDN'T DISCOVER RIVER NIGER Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Jan 30, 2013 The British colonial authority spread the rumour in the colony that one mungp Park discovered river niger.Old tales....the natives have lived in the banks of river niger for ages. The Niger River is the principal river of western Africa, extending about 4,180 km (2,600 mi). Its drainage basin is 2,117,700 km (817,600 sq mi) in area Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea.

It runs in a crescent through Mali, Niger, on the border with Benin and then through Nigeria, discharging through a massive delta, known as the Niger Delta or the Oil Rivers, into the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. The Niger is the third-longest river in Africa, exceeded only by the Nile and the Congo River (also known as the Zaïre River). Its main tributary is the Benue River. Mungo Park who was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the central portion of the Niger River was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. In 1794 Park offered his services to the African Association, then looking for a successor to Major Daniel Houghton, who had been sent in 1790 to discover the course of the Niger River and had died in the Sahara. Supported by Sir Joseph Banks, Park was selected. On 21 June 1795, he reached the Gambia River and ascended it 200 miles to a British trading station named Pisania. On 2 December, accompanied by two local guides, he started for the unknown interior.

He chose the route crossing the upper Senegal basin and through the semi-desert region of Kaarta. The journey was full of difficulties, and at Ludamar he was imprisoned by a Moorish chief for four months. On 1 July 1796, he escaped, alone and with nothing but his horse and a pocket compass, and on the 21st reached the long-sought Niger River at Ségou, being the first European to do so. He followed the river downstream 80 miles to Silla, where he was obliged to turn back, lacking the resources to go further.[4][5] On his return journey, begun on 30 July, he took a route more to the south than that originally followed, keeping close to the Niger as far as Bamako, thus tracing its course for some 300 miles. At Kamalia he fell ill, and owed his life to the kindness of a man in whose house he lived for seven months. Eventually he reached Pisania again on 10 June 1797, returning to Scotland by way of Antigua on 22 December.

He had been thought dead, and his return home with news of the discovery of the Niger River evoked great public enthusiasm. An account of his journey was drawn up for the African Association by Bryan Edwards, and his own detailed narrative appeared in 1799 (Travels in the Interior of Africa). It was extremely popular and is available in Project Gutenberg.[6] His book, Travels in the interior districts of Africa, was a success because it detailed what he observed, what he survived, and the people he encountered. His honest descriptions set a standard for future travel writers to follow. This gave Europeans a glimpse of what Africa was really like. Park introduced them to a vast, unexplored continent. After Park's death public and political interest in Africa began to increase. He had proved that Africa could be explored. Perhaps the most lasting effect of Park's travels, though, was their influence on European governments. WIN, an acronym for "What Is New" is a comprehensive multimedia services package for maximum news distribution across several media channels via WIN TV, exclusively dedicated for New Media production and Broadcating Category Biography of the Scots Explorer Mungo Park By Alistair Boddy-Evans Updated August 08, 2016.

Mungo Park, a Scottish surgeon and explorer, was sent out by the 'Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior of Africa' to discover the course of the River Niger. Having achieved a degree of fame from his first trip, carried out alone and on foot, he returned to Africa with a party of 40 Europeans, all of whom lost their lives in the adventure. Born: 1771, Foulshiels, Selkirk, Scotland Died: 1806, Bussa Rapids, (now under the Kainji Reservior, Nigeria ) An Early Life: Mungo Park was born in 1771, near Selkirk in Scotland, the seventh child of a well-to-do farmer. He was apprenticed to a local surgeon and undertook medical studies in Edinburgh. With a medical diploma and a desire for fame and fortune, Park set off for London, and through his brother-in-law, William Dickson, a Covent Garden seedsman, he got his opportunity. An introduction to Sir Joseph Banks, a famed English botanist and explorer who had circumnavigated the world with Captain James Cook .

continue reading below our video Test Your General Science Knowledge The Allure of Africa: The Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, of which Banks was treasurer and unofficial director, had previously funded (for a pittance) the exploration of an Irish soldier, Major Daniel Houghton, based at Goree on the west African coast. Two important questions dominated discussions about the interior of west Africa in the drawing room of the African Association: the exact site of the semi-mythical city of Timbuktu , and the course of the River Niger. Exploring the River Niger: In 1795 the Association appointed Mungo Park to explore the course of the River Niger -- until Houghton had reported that the Niger flowed from West to East, it was believed that the Niger was a tributary of either the river Senegal or Gambia. The Association wanted proof of the river's course and to know where it finally emerged. Three current theories were: that it emptied into Lake Chad, that it curved round in a large arc to join the Zaire, or that it reached the coast at the Oil Rivers.

Mungo Park set off from the River Gambia, with the aid of the Association's West African 'contact', Dr Laidley who provided equipment, a guide, and acted as a postal service. Park started his journey dressed in European clothes, with an umbrella and a tall hat (where he kept his notes safe throughout the journey). He was accompanied by an ex-slave called Johnson who had returned from the West Indies, and a slave called Demba, who had been promised his freedom on completion of the journey. Captivity: Park knew little Arabic – he had with him two books, 'Richardson's Arabic Grammar' and a copy of Houghton's journal. Houghton's journal, which he had read on the voyage to Africa served him well, and he was forewarned to hide his most valuable gear from the local tribesmen. At his first stop with the Bondou, Park was forced to give up his umbrella and his best blue coat. Shortly after, in his first encounter with the local Muslims, Park was taken prisoner. Escape: Demba was taken away and sold, Johnson was considered to old to be of value. After four months, and with Johnson's aid, Park finally managed to escape.

He had a few belongings other than his hat and compass but refused to give up the expedition, even when Johnson refused to travel further. Relying on the kindness of African villagers, Park continued on his way to the Niger, reaching the river on 20 July 1796. Park traveled as far as Segu (Ségou) before returning to the coast. and then to England. Success Back in Britain: Park was an instant success, and the first edition of his book Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa sold out rapidly. His £1000 royalties allowed him to settle in Selkirk and set up medical practice (marrying Alice Anderson, the daughter of the surgeon to whom he had been apprenticed). But settled life soon bored him and he looked for new adventure – but only under the right conditions. Banks was offended when Park demanded a large sum to explore Australia for the Royal Society. Tragic Return to Africa: Eventually in 1805 Banks and Park came to an arrangement – Park was to lead an expedition to follow the Niger to its end.

His part consisted of 30 soldiers from the Royal Africa Corps garrisoned at Goree (they wee offered extra pay and the promise of a discharge on return), plus officers including his brother-in-law Alexander Anderson, who agreed to join the trip) and four boat builders from Portsmouth who would construct a forty-foot boat when they reached the river. In all 40 Europeans traveled with Park. Against logic and advice, Mungo Park set off from the Gambia in the rainy season – within ten days his men were falling to dysentery. After five weeks one man was dead, seven mules lost and the expedition's baggage mostly destroyed by fire. Park's letters back to London made no mention of his problems. By the time the expedition reached Sandsanding on the Niger only eleven of the original 40 Europeans were still alive. The party rested for two months but the deaths continued. By November 19 only five of them remained alive (even Alexander Anderson was dead). Sending the native guide, Isaaco, back to Laidley with his journals, Park was determined to continue.

Park, Lieutenant Martyn (who had become an alcoholic on native beer) and three soldiers set off down stream from Segu in a converted canoe, christened the HMS Joliba. Each man had fifteen muskets but little in the way of other supplies. When Isaaco reached Laidley in the Gambia news had already reached the coast of Park's death – coming under fire at the Bussa Rapids, after a journey of over 1 000 miles on the river, Park and his small party were drowned. Isaaco was sent back to discover the truth, but the only remains to be discovered was Mungo Park's munitions belt. The irony was that having avoided contact with local Muslim's by keeping to the center of the river, they were in turn mistaken for Muslim raiders and shot at.

Mungo Park Mungo Park Location of death: Bussa, Nigeria Cause of death: Murder Nationality: Scotland Executive summary: Scottish explorer of the Niger Scottish explorer of the Niger, born in Selkirkshire, Scotland, on the 20th of September 1771, at Foulshiels on the Yarrow -- the farm which his father rented from the Duke of Buccleuch. He was the seventh in a family of thirteen. Having received a good education, he was apprenticed to a surgeon named Thomas Anderson in Selkirk, and then attended the University of Edinburgh for three sessions (1789-91), obtaining the surgical diploma. By his brother-in-law, James Dickson, a botanist of repute, he was introduced to Sir Joseph Banks , then president of the Royal Society, and through his good offices obtained the post of assistant-surgeon on board the "Worcester" East Indiaman. In this capacity he made the voyage in 1792 to Benkulen, in Sumatra, and on his return in 1793 he contributed a description of eight new Sumatran fishes to the Transactions of the Linnean Society.

Park in 1794 offered his services to the African Association, then looking out for a successor to Major Daniel Houghton, who had been sent out in 1790 to discover the course of the Niger and had perished in the Sahara. Supported by the influence of Sir Joseph Banks, Park was successful in his application. On the 21st of June 1795 he reached the Gambia and ascended that river 200 miles to a British trading station named Pisania. On the 2nd of December, accompanied by two negro servants, he started for the unknown interior. He chose the route crossing the upper Senegal basin and through the semi-desert region of Kaarta. The journey was full of difficulties, and at Ludamar he was imprisoned by a Moorish chief for four months. He escaped, alone and with nothing save his horse and a pocket compass, on the 1st of July 1796, and on the 21st of the same month reached the long-sought Niger at Segu, being the first European to gaze on its waters.

He followed the river downstream 80 miles to Silla, where he was obliged to turn back, being without means and utterly exhausted. On his return journey, begun on the 30th of July, he took a route more to the south than that originally followed, keeping close to the Niger as far as Bamako, thus tracing the course of that stream in all for some 300 miles. At Kamalia he fell ill, and owed his life to the kindness of a negro in whose house he lived for seven months. Eventually he reached Pisania again on the 10th of June 1797, returning to England by way of America on the 22nd of December. He had been thought to be dead, and his return home with the news of the discovery of the Niger evoked great public enthusiasm. An account of his journey was at once drawn up for the African Association by Bryan Edwards, and a detailed narrative from his own pen appeared in 1799 (Travels in the Interior of Africa). Abundance of incident and an unaffected style rendered the work extremely popular, and it still holds its place as an acknowledged classic in this department of literature.

Settling at Foulshiels, Park in August 1799 married a daughter of his old master, Thomas Anderson. Two offers made to him to go to New South Wales in some official capacity came to nothing, and in October 1801 Park removed to Peebles, where he practiced as a doctor. In the autumn of 1803 he was invited by the government to lead another expedition to the Niger. Park, who chafed at the hardness and monotony of life at Peebles, accepted the offer, but the starting of the expedition was delayed. Part of the waiting time was occupied in the perfecting of his Arabic -- his teacher being Sidi Ambak Bubi, a native of Mogador; whose vagaries both amused and alarmed the people of Peebles. In May 1804 Park went back to Foulshiels, where he made the acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott , then living nearby at Ashesteil, with whom he soon became on terms of warm friendship.

In September he was summoned to London to leave on the new expedition; he parted from Sir Walter with the hopeful proverb on his lips, "Freits (omens) follow those that look to them." Park had at that time adopted the theory that the Niger and the Congo were one, and in a memorandum drawn up before he left England he wrote: "My hopes of returning by the Congo are not altogether fanciful." He sailed from Portsmouth for the Gambia on the 31st of January 1805, having been given a captain's commission as head of the government expedition. Alexander Anderson, his brother-in-law, was second in command, and on him was bestowed a lieutenancy. George Scott, a fellow Borderer, was draughtsman, and the party included four or five artificers. At Goree (then in British occupation) Park was joined by Lieutenant Martyn, R.A., thirty-five privates and two seamen. The expedition did not reach the Niger until the middle of August, when only eleven Europeans were left alive; the rest had succumbed to fever or dysentery. From Bamako the journey to Segu was made by canoe.

Having received permission from the ruler of that town to proceed, at Sansandig, a little below Segu, Park made ready for his journey down the still unknown part of the river. Park, helped by one soldier, the only one left capable of work, converted two canoes into one tolerably good boat, 40 ft. long and 6 ft. broad. This he christened H.M. schooner "Joliba" (the native name for the Niger), and in it, with the surviving members of his party, he set sail downstream on the 19th of November. At Sansandig, on the 28th of October, Anderson had died, and in him Park lost the only member of the party -- except Scott, already dead -- who had been of real use. Those who embarked in the "Joliba" were Park, Martyn, three European soldiers (one mad), a guide and three slaves. Before his departure Park gave to Isaaco, a Mandingo guide who had been with him thus far, letters to take back to the Gambia for transmission to England.

The spirit with which Park began the final stage of his enterprise is well illustrated by his letter to the head of the Colonial Office: "I shall", he wrote, "set sail for the east with the fixed resolution to discover the termination of the Niger or perish in the attempt... though all the Europeans who are with me should die, and though I were myself half dead, I would stil persevere, and if I could not succeed in the object of my journey, I would at least die on the Niger." To his wife he wrote stating his intention not to stop nor land anywhere until he reached the coast, where he expected to arrive about the end of January 1806. These were the last communications received from Park, and nothing more was heard of the party until reports of disaster reached the settlements on the Gambia. At length the British government engaged Isaaco to go to the Niger to ascertain the fate of the explorer. At Sansandig Isaaco found the guide who had gone down stream with Park, and the substantial accuracy of the story he told was later confirmed by the investigations of Hugh Clapperton and Richard Lander.

This guide (Amadi) stated that Park's canoe descended the river to Yauri, where he (the guide) landed. In this long journey of about 1000 miles Park, who had plenty of provisions, stuck to his resolution of keeping aloof from the natives. Below Jenn�, came Timbuktu, and at various other places the natives came out in canoes and attacked his boat. These attacks were all repulsed, Park and his party having plenty of firearms and ammunition and the natives having none. The boat also escaped the many perils attendant on the navigation of an unknown stream strewn with many rapids -- Park had built the "Joliba" so that it drew only a foot of water. But at the Bussa rapids, not far below Yauri, the boat struck on a rock and remained fast. On the bank were gathered hostile natives, who attacked the party with bow and arrow and throwing spears. Their position being untenable, Park, Martyn, and the two soldiers who still survived, sprang into the river and were drowned. The sole survivor was one of the slaves, from whom was obtained the story of the final scene.

Isaaco, and later Lander, obtained some of Park's effects, but his journal was never recovered. In 1827 his second son, Thomas, landed on the Guinea coast, intending to make his way to Bussa, where he thought his father might be detained a prisoner, but after penetrating some little distance inland he died of fever. Park's widow died in 1840. Wife: (dau. of Thomas Anderson, m. Aug-1798, d. 1840) Son: Thomas (d. 1827) HISTORY OF EXPLORATION Enjoy the Famous Daily Henry Hudson: 1607-1611 Although Henry Hudson's name is now entirely associated with north America, his aim in the first three of his four voyages is to find a northeast passage rather than one to the northwest. He is commissioned first by the English merchants of the Muscovy Company , in 1607 and again in 1608, to push further the exploration undertaken by Willem Barents - in the hope of finding a route round Novaya Zemlya which will lead to the east.

On each occasion he fails to go further than his predecessor. In April 1609 he departs again, this time sailing on behalf of the Dutch and with a broader brief. He is to seek a passage either northeast or northwest. Once again Hudson heads northeast. But when nearly surrounded by ice, near Novaya Zemlya, he is confronted by a mutinous crew. He pacifies them by agreeing to pursue the other part of his commission, involving less northerly waters. His ship, the Half Moon, turns west across the Atlantic and reaches America in the vicinity of Virginia. Hudson searches northwards up the coast, and turns into the great inlet of New York Bay. Exploring the river now known by his name, he soon realizes that it is not the strait he is looking for. In October 1609 he turns for home. The English authorities now forbid Hudson to serve the Dutch, so his last journey is again for a consortium of English merchants. He is to explore north of the St Lawrence, already proved by Cartier to be a river rather than a strait. He leaves England, in the Discovery, in April 1610.

During June the Discovery sails into a broad strait, and in early August Hudson arrives in a massive bay. Both strait and bay are now known by his name. He turns southwards in Hudson Bay and reaches its most southerly part (James Bay) in late October. Hudson makes his winter quarters in James Bay. He and his crew survive the dark freezing months, but not without discontents. There is a mutiny when the return journey begins. On 22 June 1611 Hudson and eight others, including his son, are set adrift in an open boat. Nothing more is heard of them. The chief mutineer dies on the journey home. The pathetic remnant of the crew, reaching England in September 1611, are treated leniently. The interest generated by Hudson's expedition hastens English involvement in the fur trade of northern Canada. He has not been the first European to explore either the strait or the bay which have made him famous. But he has been the most thorough. And his adventure has been the most dramatic. Terra Australis: 16th-18th century From the early 16th century European merchants are sailing the seas of southeast Asia.

Often they make unexpected landfall, raising hopes of unknown territories rich in gold, silver or spice. The discovery of the Solomon Islands by a Spanish vessel in 1568 prompts interest in a so-called Terra Australis Incognita ('unknown southern land'). Part of the brief given to Francis Drake, when he sets off in 1577 to sail across the Pacific, is that he should search for this supposed land of treasure (see Drake's voyage ). Interest is maintained in the early 17th century when Dutch ships, sailing to and from the Moluccas , sight stretches of the western Australian coast. Are these places perhaps connected to the southern land? The governor general of the Dutch East Indies, Antonio van Diemen, decides to investigate. He chooses for the purpose an experienced navigator, Abel Tasman, who is instructed to sail far south in the Indian Ocean and then to strike east, hoping to discover whether there is an open passage to South America. In the process he may also perhaps discover Terra Australis. Tasman leaves Batavia in August 1642. He sails to Mauritius before continuing south and then east. He first makes landfall in November.

He calls the place Van Diemen's Land, after the governor who has appointed him. Not until 1856 is the island renamed Tasmania, in honour of its discoverer. Keeping to the southern coast of this large island, Tasman continues eastwards. In December he reaches New Zealand. Sailing northeast along the coast of both South and North Island, he concludes that this must be the northwest corner of Terra Australis. Tasman discovers Tonga in January 1643, and the Fiji islands in February. He then continues northwest, passing north of New Guinea and returning to Batavia in June. Remarkably, in his ten-month voyage, Tasman has sailed all the way round the real Terra Australis without noticing it. It will be another century before the continent of Australia is properly discovered and charted. Ohio and Mississippi: 1669-1682 The great central valley of north America, watered by the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, is first visited by Europeans during the late 1660s and 1670s. This development is the direct result of the growth of the colony of New France during the 1660s.

As the French explore through and around the Great Lakes, they begin also to move down the rivers running south from this region. The nearest large river to the eastern lakes, and the first to receive attention, is the Ohio. Robert de La Salle explores the Ohio valley during 1669, in a journey which provides the basis for the later French claim to this area. Four years later a much more dramatic expedition is undertaken by a trader, Louis Jolliet, and a Jesuit priest, Jacques Marquette (founder in 1668 of the mission at Sault Sainte Marie ). With five companions, in 1673, they make their way round Lake Michigan in two birch bark canoes. From Green Bay they paddle up the Fox river, before carrying their canoes overland to the Wisconsin and thus on to the Mississippi. They travel down the Mississippi as far as its junction with the Arkansas river, by which time they are convinced that it must flow into the Gulf of Mexico rather than the Pacific. With this information they make their way back to Lake Michigan. Inspired by their example, La Salle becomes determined to reach the mouth of the Mississippi.

After two false starts, several disasters and a long struggle for funds, he finally achieves the task in 1682. At the mouth of the great river he claims possession for France of the entire region drained by the Mississippi and its many tributaries, naming it Louisiana - in honour of his monarch, Louis XIV. It is some time before the southern region becomes a desirable colony, though there is a brief flurry of excitement with John Law's Mississippi Scheme of 1717 and the founding of New Orleans in 1718. But the Ohio valley is a region of great significance in the 18th century, being hotly disputed between the French and the British. Bering's Voyages: 1728-1741 The Danish explorer Vitus Bering is an officer in the Russian navy when he is appointed by Peter the Great , in 1724, to lead an expedition to discover whether Siberia is joined to the continent of America. Bering builds a ship at the mouth of the Kamchatka river, in eastern Siberia, and sails north in July 1728 through what is now the Bering Sea.

He makes his way up through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Circle, seeing and naming the Diomede Islands in the middle of the channel. On this occasion he fails to sight the coast of Alaska. On a second voyage, in 1741, Bering reaches Alaska and explores part of its southern coast. On the way back to the Kamchatka peninsula his ship is wrecked on one of the Komandorski islands. Bering dies that winter, but survivors of his expedition get back to Russia with furs purchased in Alaska. The lure of fur brings merchants eastwards and begins Russia's link with Alaska - formalized at the end of the century in the Russian-American Company . Discovery of the Pacific islands: 18th century During the 18th century the maritime powers of northwest Europe make an increasingly coherent effort to discover which remote islands may be lurking in the middle of the vast Pacific. Dutch, French and English vessels undertake voyages of discovery, gradually filling in the map. Islands are regularly discovered during the century.

Among the better known, Easter Island is reached by the Dutch in 1722, Tahiti by the English in 1767, the New Hebrides by the French in 1768, and New Caledonia and Hawaii by the English (in the person of Captain Cook ) in 1774 and 1778. Three voyages of Captain Cook: 1768-1779 The voyages of James Cook are the first examples of exploration undertaken on scientific principles. His first expedition, sailing in the Endeavour from Plymouth in 1768, has a scientific task as its central mission. It is known to the astronomers of the day that in June 1769 the planet Venus will pass directly between the earth and the sun. An international effort is made to time the precise details of this transit, as seen from different parts of the world, in the hope of calculating the earth's distance from the sun. Cook first mission is to sail to Tahiti, set up a telescope for this purpose and take the necessary readings. Cook's second purpose is exploration.

He is to continue the search for the supposed southern land, Terra Australis , and he is to chart the coast of the known territory of New Zealand . He has among his passengers scientists of another discipline. The botanists Joseph Banks and his Swedish colleague Daniel Solander are eager to collect specimens of Pacific flora. Cook observes the transit of Venus in the summer of 1769 and then spends the next eighteen months charting the entire coast of New Zealand's two main islands and the east coast of Australia. The Endeavour is back in Britain in July 1771. The original astronomical purpose proves the least significant part of the voyage (the data proves inadequate for the intended purpose). But Cook's charting of these important coast lines is carried out to a scientific standard previously unattempted. As the first Europeans to visit Australia's congenial eastern coast, the reports of Cook and his distinguished passengers are instrumental in encouraging the notion of forming British settlements . And the botanical specimens of Banks and Solander prove of immense value. One issue not resolved is whether there is an unknown southern continent south of New Zealand. Cook now proposes another voyage to more southerly latitudes.

Cook sails from England in 1772 (now in the Resolution) and spends the three antarctic summers of 1772, 1773 and 1774 in a complete circumnavigation of the ice mass of the south pole - proving finally that there is no unknown habitable continent in the south (though Cook suspects, rightly, that there may be land under the ice). Back in England in 1775, Cook reveals another scientific aspect to his explorations. His crew have remained surprisingly healthy in these long voyages, avoiding the sailor's debilitating disease of scurvy. Cook publishes a paper on his method for avoiding this condition. His men are given a regular ration of lemon juice. Cook has discovered the importance of vitamin C, long before the substance itself is identified. The navy adopts his method, later substituting lime juice for lemon (causing British sailors in foreign ports to be known as 'limeys'). Cook's aim on his third voyage (again in the Resolution, from 1776) is to explore the Pacific coast of north America. He sails through the Bering Strait as far as the pack ice of the north pole.

On his outward journey he discovers the Hawaiian group of islands, and here - wintering in Hawaii itself - he is killed in a skirmish with natives. He has spent all but two of the past ten years at sea, making an unprecedented contribution to knowledge of the Antarctic seas and the Pacific. Northwest Canada:1789-1793 The four years from 1789 bring much new knowledge about northwest Canada, particularly from two great journeys carried out by a Scottish fur trader, Alexander Mackenzie. By the 18th century Canada has already been well explored, mainly by fur traders, to some considerable distance west of the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay. Mackenzie has been living for some years at the extremity of the known region, with his base at the Indian trading post of Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca. A great river flows northwest out of Lake Athabasca. In early June 1789 Mackenzie sets off with a small party in birch-bark canoes to discover where it leads. A week brings them to the Great Slave Lake, which they find covered in ice too solid for their canoes but too fragile to walk on.

They carry the canoes round its edge until they come to a river (now the Mackenzie) emerging from its western extremity. They follow this to its outlet, at Mackenzie Bay, into the Beaufort Sea - a part of the Arctic Ocean beyond the as yet undiscovered northwest passage. Mackenzie and his party are back in Fort Chipewyan in mid-September, having canoed about 3000 miles in not much more than three months. With an unsated appetite for adventure, Mackenzie sets off again from Fort Chipewyan in 1792 on an even more ambitious undertaking - to reach the Pacific. There has as yet been no recorded crossing of the continent north of Mexico, and it is unlikely that any unknown American Indian was ever tempted by the task which Mackenzie undertakes in July 1792. From Fort Chipewyan he travels along and between a succession of rivers, and then through the Canadian Rockies, to reach the coast at the mouth of the Bella Coola river in June 1793. Mackenzie is unaware of it, but another explorer is in the region at exactly this same moment.

Mackenzie reaches the sea about 100 miles north of Vancouver Island, named after George Vancouver who is spending two years surveying the coast from California to Alaska. In 1792 he becomes the first captain to sail round Vancouver Island. Vancouver has begun his career as an able seaman on Cook's second voyage (1772-5) and has graduated to midshipman for the third voyage (1776-80). Now, leaving Britain in 1791 in command of his own expedition to the Pacific, he takes pride in applying Cook's high standards of surveying and cartography. Indeed on occasion there is a humorous delight in upstaging the master. On the chart for Dusky Bay in New Zealand where Cook , lacking time to investigate, has written 'Nobody knows what', Vancouver now fills in the coastline and the words 'Somebody knows what'. Thanks to Mackenzie and Vancouver, by 1793 somebody knows a great deal more than before about northwest Canada.

The challenge of Africa: from1788 The ability of European ships to sail anywhere on the oceans of the world - culminating in the great voyages of Captain Cook in 1768-79 - means that by the end of the 18th century the coast lines of the continents are familiar. So, from many centuries of to and fro, are the interior regions of Europe and Asia. The interiors of the other three continents remain largely a mystery. North America will soon have heroic tales of exploration (particularly that of Lewis and Clark in 1804-6) and Australia's fearsome outback will claim tragic victims (such as Burke and Wills ). But it is the ancient continent of Africa which now most fires the imagination of explorers, particularly in Britain. The mouths of Africa's great rivers - the Nile, the Niger, the Congo, the Zambezi - are familiar to European traders. And there are reliable reports of great stretches of inland river (particularly the Niger, linked in history with several important African kingdoms ). But no one has any idea how it all joins up. Where do the inland rivers reach the sea? Where do the estuary waters come from?

These questions tantalize explorers from the late 18th century to the heady days of Livingstone , Burton and Speke , Baker and Stanley . In 1788 an African Association is founded in London. Trade is one of its aims. Another is exploration, and specifically the discovery of the course of the Niger. Mungo Park and the Niger: 1795-1806 Mungo Park, by trade a ship's surgeon, hears of the African Association 's interest in the Niger and in 1794 offers his services as an explorer. From June 1795 he travels 200 miles up the river Gambia and then sets off overland into unknown territory. After a highly eventful journey he reaches the Niger in July 1796, but is only able to travel a short way down the river before he has to turn for home - exhausted and insolvent. He makes his way safely back to Britain, where his account of his adventures (Travels in the Interior of Africa, 1799) is an immediate success. In 1803 the British government decides to sponsor another expedition to the Niger. Park is invited to lead it.

As an official undertaking, the new expedition is large and relatively well equipped. But this time Africa shows its fearsome credentials rather more emphatically. Forty men set off up the Gambia in 1805. By the time Park reaches the Niger his companions have been reduced to eight; fever and dysentery have killed the others. In November 1805 the party of nine sets off in canoes from Ségou, to make their way down unknown stretches of the river. No more is heard of them, until vague reports of disaster filter back to British settlements on the Gambia. Eventually it is discovered that the explorers travelled 1000 miles down the river to the region of Bussa, where they died after an attack by natives.

University of South Carolina Libraries - Rare Books and Special Collections Island 4: West Africa, the Niger, and the Quest for Timbuktu Mungo Park, 1771-1806; James Rennell, 1742-1830 Travels in the interior districts of Africa : performed under the direction and patronage of the African Association, in the years 1795, 1796, and 1797. By Mungo Park, surgeon. With an appendix containing geographical illustrations of Africa. By Major Rennell 3rd ed. London: W. Bulmer, 1799. Bookplate of Louis D. Tiemann. Park, a farmer's son from the Scottish borders who studied medicine at Edinburgh, set out from the Gambia in late 1795, on foot, with one servant, to trace the coourse of the fabled river Niger.

Ill-prepared and evetually destitute, he suffered hair-raising hardships and persecution as well as receiving great kindness from some Africans, but he was able to establish the eastward flow of the Niger, and this became an immediate bestseller, with three editions within a year: it has never been out of print since. On his second expedition in 1805, a larger-scale government-sponsored effort, Park planned with substantial military support to take boat-building supplies overland from the west coast, build boats and sail down the Niger to its source; disease decimated his companions, and Park himself drowned trying to evade capture after a fight with the inhabitants at Bussa, hundreds of miles downstream. His journal for the first part of the trip was later published, with a postscript from his African servant Isaaco. Park's silver-mounted walking-stick survives in Nigeria, as the staff of office of the Emirs of Yauri. Donated from the library of Alfred Chapin Rogers by Mrs. Elizabeth F. Pyne.

Mungo Park, 1771-1806; James Rennell, 1742-1830 Travels in the interior districts of Africa: performed under the direction and patronage of the African association, in the years 1795, 1796, and 1797; by Mungo Park, surgeon: with an appendix, containing geographical illustrations of Africa: by Major Rennell Philadelphia: from the London quarto edition by James Humphreys: And Sold by him, at No. 106, South Side of Market-Street, 1800. Signature of Thomas McGehee, 1810. It is noteworthy that this first American edition of Mungo Park's Travels was printed in Philadelphia, perhaps because of links to the English Quaker involvement in the anti-slavery movement. Donated by Dr. D. Strother Pope. Robert Adams The narrative of Robert Adams, a sailor who was wrecked on the western coast of Africa, in the year 1810, was detained three years in slavery by the Arabs of the Great Desert, and resided several months in the City of Tombuctoo.

With a map, notes and an appendix London, J. Murray, 1816. This narrative is representative of several volumes in the Thomas Cooper collection, written by shipwrecked sailors who had been taken captive in Moslem areas of West Africa. Adams, an American sailor picked up destitute in London using an assumed name to evade reimpressment in the British navy, at first excited considerable scepticism from Sir Joseph Banks and other Africanists, perhaps in part because he was less enthusiastic about Timbuktu than al-Shabeni had been, but the consensus soon came to be that the core of his tale was genuine, and that the story taken down and edited here, by Samuel Cock of the African Committee, does indeed give the a firsthand account from the first European to return from Timbuktu. Ibn Batuta, 1304-1377; Samuel Lee, 1783-1852, tr. The travels of Ibn Batuta / translated from the abridged Arabic manuscript copies, preserved in the Public Library of Cambridge. With notes, illustrative of the history, geography, botany, antiquities, &c. occuring throughout the work, by the Rev.

Samuel Lee Oriental Translation Fund Publications ; 1. London : Printed for the Oriental translation committee, and sold by J. Murray <etc.>, 1829. The early 19th-century quest for Timbuktu renewed European interest in older Arabic travel accounts. Ibn Batuta's narrative, starting as a pilgrimage from Morocco to Mecca, records an amazing series of travels onwards through Central Asia, to India and possibly China. In separate trips, he also visited Spain and West Africa, before dictating this account on his return home in 1357. The polyglot orientalist Samuel Lee, a former carpenter's apprentice from Shropshire who taught himself Latin, Greek and Hebrew from secondhand bookstalls, entered Cambridge University at age thirty, and within six years became professor of Arabic en route to the more prestigious regius chair in Hebrew. Map of Africa from John McQueen, 1778-1870, A Geographical and Commercial View of North Central Africa Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1821.

This map, which was published after Park's second expedition, but well before the explorations of Clapperton or Lander, postulates the outflow of the Niger into the Bight of Benin. McQueen had first proposed his theory some five years earlier, but it would not be conclusively demonstrated until the report of Richard and John Lander nearly ten years later. Dixon Denham; Hugh Clapperton, 1788-1827; and Walter Oudney Narrative of travels and discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824, . . . extending across the Great Desert to the tenth degree of northern latitude, and from Kouka in Bornou, to Sackatoo, the capital of the Felatah empire 2nd ed. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1826. What is nearly always known as "Clapperton's first expedition," after the Scottish half-pay naval captain who accomplished most of what got done, had in fact started as a government commission to Dr. Walter Oudney, an Edinburgh M.D.

recently appointed to the rather imaginative post of "consul at Bornu." Traveling across the Sahara from Tripoli to Lake Chad, then still seriously proposed as the outflow of the Niger, they split off from their prickly army colleague Major Denham (who nonetheless got first title-page credit for their report). After Oudney's death, Clapperton traveled on alone to the great Hausa cities of Kano and Sokoto, seat of Sultan Bello's Fulani empire. On his return to London, Clapperton was immediately asked to set out again, this time to go northwards from the coast, but on this second expedition, the Sultan was less accommodating, and Clapperton died in Sokoto without gaining the trade treaty for which he had hoped, and it was left to his servant Richard Lander to prepare an account of the second journey. Sultan Bello's Map of Sokoto and Central Africa from Denham, Clapperton, and Lander,Narrative of discoveries in Northern and Central Africa London: John Murray, 1826.

In 1817, the scholarly Sultan Bello had succeeded his father as Sultan of Sokoto, the centre of the huge Fulani empire established over the previous decade in the Jihad led by Usman dan Fodio. Alexander Gordon Laing, 1793-1826 Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko, and Soolima countries in Western Africa London: John Murray, 1825. In the 1820s, an intense rivalry developed between the French and British over the West African interior, symbolized by the substantial cash prize of 2000 francs offered in 1824 by the French Geographical Society for the first expedition to return from Timbuktu. Perhaps the saddest episode of the subsequent international race was the story of Major Gordon Laing.

Laing, yet another Scottish-born explorer, an army officer with the Royal African Corps in Sierra Leone, had actually succeeded in reaching the city, though no one in Europe knew it till much later; setting out in 1825 from Tripoli across the Sahara, he had entered Timbuktu on August 18th, 1826, but had been killed shortly after leaving the city, in late September. Shown here is Laing's first book, recording his earlier explorations inland from Freetown in 1822 into the Mandingo interior, the manuscript of which he had, when setting out for Timbuktu, left behind in London to be prepared for publication by a friend. Alfred Tennyson, 1809-1892 Timbuctoo, a poem which obtained the Chancellor's Medal . . . in Prolusiones Academicae praemiis annuis dignatae Cambridge: John Smith, 1829. In 1828-29, interest in West Africa was such that even the set topic of the Cambridge University poetry prize was Timbuctoo.

The winner was the future poet laureate Tennyson, then an undergraduate at Trinity College, and, as this conclusion to his poem shows, he was not sure that he really wanted accurate knowledge of Timbuctoo, because then the mystery and glamour would be dispersed. Click on the image for an excerpt of Tennyson's "Timbuctoo". Rene Caillie, 1799-1838 Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo; and across the Great Desert, to Morocco, performed in the years 1824-1828 2 vols. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830.

It was a young Frenchman, Rene Caillie, living in French Senegal, who, disguised as a pilgrim returning from Mecca who had escaped from capture by Europeans, traded and begged his way inland, armed only with an umbrella, till on April 20th 1828 he reached the fabled city, "of whose population, civilization and trade with the Soudan such exaggerated notions have prevailed." He found "nothing but a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth," situated "in an immense plain of white sand." Ironically, he was able to obtain full details of Gordon Laing's murder two years earlier, before travelling home in caravan across the Sahara to Morocco and a triumphant welcome in Paris. Significantly, this English translation of Caillie's account appeared with the imprint of two publishers better known for issuing fashionable novels. Timbuktu in 1827 reproduced from Rene Caillie, Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830. This is the picture, impressive though it may seem, that finally disillusioned Europeans about the long-fabled wonders of the West African city.

Friedrick Konrad Hornemann The journal of Frederick Horneman's travels . . . in Africa in the years 1797-8 London: G. and W. Nicol, 1802. Hornemann, a German theological student from Gottingen, was another of the African Association's proteges in the late 1790s, last heard of in January 1800, as he set out in disguise across the Sahara, aiming for Bornu. This wonderful map is valuable for showing, not only the clustering of previous European exploration around the two rivers, the Nile and the Niger, but also the then-current theory about the Niger's course, that it terminated inland in lake Chad. Richard Lander, 1804-1834; John Lander, 1807-1839 Journal of an expedition to explore the course and termination of the Niger, with a narrative of a voyage down that river to its termination 2 vols. New York, J. & J. Harper, 1832-37.

The Cornishman Richard Lander, Clapperton's sole surviving companion from his second expedition, had returned to West Africa with his brother John, to prove finally the lower course of the river Niger, as it turned south to flow down into the delta region in the bight of Benin. This hideously-rebound little volume, an early American reprint, is displayed for its frontispiece map, at last depicting the Niger's course correctly King's Collections : Online Exhibitions : Mungo Park Online Exhibitions Home | Special Collections Exhibitions | I speak of Africa | Interior exploration of Africa |Mungo Park Mungo Park Portrait of Mungo Park, from: Mungo Park. Travels in the interior districts of Africa: performed under the direction and patronage of the African Association, in the years 1795, 1796 and 1797. London: printed by W. Bulmer and Co.

for the author, 1799 [FCO Historical Collection DT356 PAR] In June 1788 nine of the twelve members of the Saturday Club, a gentlemen’s dining club, formed themselves into an ‘Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa,’ as they deemed it unworthy of their ‘present age’ that only so little was known about ‘so large a portion of the globe’ as the African continent. When in May 1795 the twenty-three year old Scottish surgeon Mungo Park (1771-1806) left on his expedition to ‘ascertain the course and if possible, the rise and termination of [the river Niger]… [and] to visit the principal towns or cities in its neighbourhood, particularly Tombuctooo and Houssa,’ he was already the fourth explorer to be sent out by the African Association, as it was commonly known. Two of his predecessors, John Ledyard (1751-89) and Daniel Houghton (1740-91) had died in the attempt.

The third, Simon Lucas (ca.1766-99), had not penetrated far into the interior, due to political upheaval in the region. Park arrived in the Gambia in June. From there he travelled on with only a small amount of luggage, accompanied by his interpreter Johnson, a freed slave, and Demba, his servant. At first all went well but then Park was captured by Moors and badly treated. He eventually managed to escape and after being repeatedly robbed, suffering from fever, starvation and thirst, he finally reached the banks of the river Niger in July 1796: I saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission; the long sought for, majestic Niger, glittering to the morning sun, a broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward. He travelled on to Silla but then decided to return to the Gambian coast for safety. Park, who had been given up for dead, received a warm welcome in England. His travel account, written in a direct and unassuming style and providing a detailed description of the places he visited and their inhabitants, was a great success.

Nevertheless, Park had only been able to fulfil one part of his objective, namely to establish the course of the river. The Niger’s source and its mouth were still unknown. In order to settle these questions, another, much more elaborate, government-sponsored expedition under Park’s leadership left for the Gambia in 1805. It was a disaster. When the party set off, it consisted of 44 Europeans; by the time it reached the Niger, only ten were still alive. By November, when Park wrote in a letter to his wife of his intention to sail down the river in a canoe to find its mouth, he had only three companions left. This letter was the last that was heard of him and for many years his fate was unknown. In this exhibition

Question: Which British explorer was in 1796 the first European to discover and travel the course of the Niger river?
Answer: MUNGO PARK